Where I Stand: Ruminations on the future

Monday, July 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

BRIAN GREENSPUN is editor of the Las Vegas SUN.

PHENOMENAL possibilities.

The recent revelation that Hillary Rodham Clinton visualized herself in a conversation with former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt caused more than a few eyebrows to arch and nerves to twitch among some people. After all, fretted her critics, it just wouldn't do for someone of Hillary's stature and prominence to be seen or heard talking to past people.

Now that the truth is out, we realize that what Hillary did is no different than what hundreds of Fortune 500 chief executive officers and their staffs do during their vaunted profitability and efficiency retreats that have become the norm rather than the odd exception. In fact, what our first lady did by imagining a conversation with a noted predecessor is far tamer than what many of us are taking for granted in today's boardrooms.

Or so I was thinking during a most spectacular fireworks display that lit up Lake Tahoe. As much as I tried to focus on the fireworks, the events earlier in the day harkened me toward a new reality in which listening to persuasive voices from the past could be child's play compared to what is in store for us.

Part of my holiday weekend was spent at a 50th birthday party for a friend of mine at Lake Tahoe. The mere fact that my friends and I are dangerously close to that mid-term of birthdays ( it's amazing how the definition of middle age keeps sliding forward to keep pace with the person whose counting) should make us give greater consideration to what is left of the future rather than spend too much time, other than what is needed for historical perspective, on what has already passed us by.

There was a convergence of sorts on the North Shore of beautiful Lake Tahoe that the residents probably have not seen for many decades. To say that the party-goers were well-known members of the country's corporate elite is an understatement. We can say that the birthday boy has friends in high places. We can also say that my presence was requested to add some balance to the guest list.

This was the kind of 50th birthday party in which the celebrant uses the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gather his friends for a life-altering moment. In our case, it was the chance for all of us fiftysomethings to listen to some New Age experts tell us about how to achieve older age with grace, style and, most important, good health.

Among the lecturers who had been summoned to speak to the group were Drs. Dean Ornish and Deepak Chopra. Chopra is best known for his best-selling book, "Ageless Body, Timeless Mind," and Ornish is regaled as one of the leaders in reversing heart damage through noninvasive medical treatment. Both have growing numbers of followers around the country and have received numerous honors and awards from mainstream medical colleagues and universities.

That the leaders of industry listened to the New Agers and their theories about making life better was not nearly as surprising, though, as the fact that the audience soon led the lecturers down paths of supposition that is the stuff from which science fiction is made.

The discussions, especially with Chopra, about the ability of mankind to communicate across an environment of common energy patterns, ranked right up there with some of the best science-fiction stories ever written. And, yet, I got the sense that some of the people in the room understood the possibilities and were not so quick to dismiss as voodoo or hocus pocus what was being advanced.

Before I get too many letters suggesting that I have finally flipped my wig -- perhaps at the thought of turning 50 before my time -- let me share the rest of the weekend with you.

I went to the movies.

I remember going to the movies as a young child. My parents would drop us off at the Huntridge Theater on Charleston for the Saturday matinees. I think the admission was a quarter, which included a box of popcorn and a drink. Talk about science fiction!

My favorite serial was Flash Gordon. His adventures with Dale and Dr. Zarkov were the kind of stories that could keep imaginations on overtime. Of course, it was all just make believe. Men couldn't fly around in space ships and there was no such thing as a ray gun. That was in the 1950s.

Today, men do fly in spaceships. They even orbit the Earth for weeks and months at a time in space stations planted firmly in the air above our planet. We've been to the moon and back and I am certain it won't be long before we pay a visit to some of our other neighbors in the vast reaches of space. As for the ray gun? It's saving lives as we speak. We call it a laser and we are just beginning to understand its many uses.

Flash Gordon was just four decades ago. Friday, we saw the movie, "Phenomenon" with John Travolta. Without giving away that wonderful story of hope and promise, the audience saw a bit more of what science fiction can conceive.

Unlike the unknowledgeable mind of a small boy in the days of Flash Gordon, there is little doubt in this grown-up's mind that one day we will achieve something similar to what John Travolta did in the movie. And it will probably take less time than it did to make the ray guns reality and space travel a matter of fact.

Yesterday's science fiction is today's real life and the time it takes from conception to reality is accelerating.

That's why I am looking at what happened this weekend a little differently. The science-fictional theories that hard-edged, bottom-line-oriented American business people were toying with in Tahoe may be just a peek into the world of tomorrow. But the fact that it is they who are doing the peeking and poking rather than those who frolic on the fringes gives more credence to the exercise.

Whether the New Agers are right or wrong remains to be seen. One thing, though, is certain. As we open our minds to the possibilities, we are able to shut less and less out. That is the way toward progress.

That is also the way to the future.